Seems the new game is called Football Manager 2005. Looks like it should be out around the time of the new season. The freaky piece of news is their new publisher is Sega. Score big point for Sega as CM does ALOT of sales. Good little investment for them.

Quote:

Naoya Tsurumi, President and COO, SEGA Europe Ltd, commented, "SEGA Europe's relationship with SI is a significant partnership for both companies. SEGA is looking forward to growing its base of market-specific products outside Japan, and signing one of the most important developers in the UK underlines our strong commitment to this."
"We are absolutely delighted to have signed a long-term deal with one of the biggest players in the global games business," added Miles Jacobson, Managing Director, Sports Interactive. "We're justifiably proud of what we've achieved with our previous games and business relationships, but we believe that this new agreement will take us to even higher levels. With both Football Manager 2005 and Eastside Hockey Manager due for release within a matter of months, we're confident that 2004 will be just the first of many successful years for Sports Interactive and SEGA."

Matthew Woodley, European Marketing Director, SEGA Europe Ltd, added, "We are delighted to extend our relationship with Sports Interactive. We're really excited to be working with them with one of the most important PC games ever and doubly excited to be able to help them achieve their goal of worldwide distribution. Football Manager 2005 is going to be a huge hit this year and something we're going to have a lot of fun working with."

Theres a link below with a couple pics at the end of the page that shows the new look. Seems pretty nice. The first half of the page is the hockey game they make thats supposedly popular too. If you like hockey. I so cant wait for this one. Looks and sounds very cool.

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But that?s exactly the point: Football Manager has been created by football fans for football fans and if that?s what you are this is manna from heaven. So although things like an all new loan system and the ability to play ?mind games? with other managers to put them off their game might seem minor additions to unbelievers, they?re exactly the sort of thing fans have been clamouring for, for years.

A full list of new features would take a sizeable website to list (no doubt Sports Interactive are working on just such a thing) but the most important new ones are the new user interface; a refined game engine featuring more than thirty extra fields for player data (many of which will be hidden unless you specifically organise a scout or manager report); updated manager and competition rules; enhanced information before and after a match to show team line-ups, injuries and tactics; international player news, so you can properly follow a player?s career; cup summary news; 2D clips of a player?s performance from agents using the game?s ?acclaimed? (read ?strictly functional?) match engine; coach reports on squads; a job centre for non-player positions; and finally a mutual contract termination to reduce the cost of releasing players and trimming squads.

Unfortunately there?s no word as yet on official licenses for kits and player images but we?re assured that this is being looked into it and fingers remain crossed for the final release.

This is all in addition to the ?basic? features of the game which includes playable leagues in 43 countries; more than 140 playable senior divisions and over 100 playable cup competitions; reserve and junior league competitions; more than 235,000 players and staff from 145 different countries; a database of more than 14,000 clubs, of which 3,000 can be managed; an updated 2D match engine; improved radio commentary; increased interaction with the media; a reworked injury, scouting and finance system; inclusion of U18 Caps and a more realistic awards system.

On top of all this there?s a new online mode that will allow 256 (!) people to play at once (although obviously the speed of such a game will be dictated by the slowest player). Although Sports Interactive have no plans to create professional leagues they will be encouraging fan created ones and indeed to get the ball rolling they?ve already purchased new Football Manager themed URLs for all of their biggest contributors to the Championship Manager series.

Clearly they?re taking this whole business very seriously and interestingly when questioned on whether they?d be co-operating with Sega on any action titles a lot of suspicious glances between PR people and developers revealed that we jurnos weren?t the first people to imagine the possibility of a Sega developed arcade game using Football Manager?s colossal database of statistics.